Samsung spends $4bn tarting up Texas factory

Samsung has said it will invest around $4bn to renovate its US chip factory so it can increase production of the semiconductors used in smartphones and tablets.

The Korean firm will plough the money into the plant in Austin, Texas, the only factory it has outside of Korea.

Samsung said the cash will be used to renovate existing operations to accommodate full System LSI production. The plant will mainly produce state of the art mobile SoCs on 300nm wafers at the 28nm process mode, it added.

The renovation work will start this month and the factory is scheduled to be ready to start mass production in the second half of next year.

“We are extremely pleased to extend our presence in Austin and reinforce Samsung’s capacity for highly advanced logic products," Dr Woosung Han, president of Samsung Austin Semiconductor, said. "The added ability in production will allow our customers to better respond to market needs.”

The firm claims that the money will be the largest single foreign investment ever made in Texas and will bump its total investment in Austin Semiconductor since 1996 to over $13bn. ®